A Suitable Amount of Crime
A Suitable Amount of Crime

Author: Nils Christie

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2004-07-31

Total Pages: 147

ISBN-13: 1134306849

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Crime and punishment are social and cultural manifestations; they are closely bound up with people's perceptions of morality, norms and values. In this book, Nils Christie argues that crime is a fluid and shallow concept - acts that could be construed as criminal are unlimited and crime is therefore in endless supply. It should not be forgotten that there are alternatives, both in the definition of crime, and in responses to it. A Suitable Amount of Crime looks at the great variations between countries over what are considered 'unwanted acts', how many are constructed as criminal and how many are punished. It explains the differences between eastern and western Europe, between the USA and the rest of the world. The author laments the size of prison populations in countries with large penal sectors, and asks whether the international community has a moral obligation to 'shame' states that are punitive in the extreme. The book is written in an engaging and easily accessible style that will appeal to anyone interested in understanding contemporary problems of crime and punishment.

The Keys to Democracy
The Keys to Democracy

Author: Maurice Pope

Publisher: Andrews UK Limited

Published: 2023-02-10

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 1788361040

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Sortition - also known as random selection - puts ordinary people in control of decision-making in government. This may seem novel, but it is how the original Athenian democracy worked. In fact, what is new is our belief that electoral systems are democratic. It was self-evident to thinkers from Aristotle to the Renaissance that elections always resulted in oligarchies, or rule by elites. In this distillation of a lifetime's thinking about the history and principles of democracy, Maurice Pope presents a new model of governance that replaces elected politicians with assemblies selected by lot. The re-introduction of sortition, he believes, offers a way out of gridlock, apathy, alienation and polarisation by giving citizens back their voice. Pope’s work - published posthumously - grew from his unique perspective as a widely travelled English classicist who also experienced the injustice of apartheid rule in South Africa. His great mind was as much at home with the history of philosophy as the mathematics of probability. Governments and even the EU have tried out sortition in recent years; the UK, France and several countries have attempted to tackle climate change through randomly selected citizens’ assemblies. The city of Paris and the German-speaking community of Belgium have set up permanent upper houses chosen by lot. Several hundred such experiments around the world are challenging the assumption that elections are the only or ideal route to credible, effective government. Writing before these mostly advisory bodies took shape, Pope lays out a vision for a government entirely based on random selection and citizen deliberation. In arguing for this more radical goal, he draws on the glories of ancient Athens, centuries of use in Venice, the success of randomly selected juries and the philosophical advantages of randomness. Sortition-based democracy, he believed, is the only plausible way to achieve each element of Abraham Lincoln’s call for a democratic government "of the people, by the people, for the people".